'SYTYCD': Mary Murphy on the kissing mayhem

Well, Wednesday night’s show was like no other. Have we gone too far with sexually explicit numbers and themes? Even the judges went temporarily insane! This is my perspective on the kissing scene gone wild. I was mesmerized with Marko and Melanie; again, beautiful choreography told a story of love and in the middle of the number they had a passionate kiss. After I told them how wonderful they were, I genuinely wanted to know from Melanie how hard it was to kiss someone so passionately that you were not involved with. I wanted to know because I could not kiss my partner on Broadway because he was engaged and it just didn’t feel right.

Melanie is so young and I really wanted to hear her answer, but before I could even finish what I said, Nigel Lythgoe jumped on top of me. At first I didn’t know it was him. It truly caught me off guard. He was fighting to kiss me, and yes, our lips did lock. But mine were sealed like a bank vault! It was like two rocks pressing up against each other, and not romantic at all. I was having an out of body experience and couldn’t believe what was taking place live. As we came up for air, Kristin Chenoweth was kissing Lil’ C! By now, I’m in shock as Nigel got up and kissed Lil’ C as well! All of us, including Cat, were laughing uncontrollably wondering what is happening here?!

But I still did not have the answer to my question. So behind the scenes, I finally had my chance to ask Melanie. She said it was her first “show kiss,” and to make matters worse, her boyfriend was in the audience. He was very supportive of her so she was very happy with the outcome. I’m sure this is an experience she will never forget!

Now as far as the actual dancing, it was a great night that made it hard for America to choose. With all the performances on a high level, I found myself nervous as to who would be put in danger of going home. I think we were all shocked when Caitlyn and Mitchell fell to the bottom after an exciting gyrating samba. But Robert and Miranda, who did peppy Broadway, and Ashley and Chris zombie’s piece did not connect the judges. We were unanimous, with the boys all in agreement that Chris’ hip-hop was at a higher level than Robert, and nobody felt like Mitchell was under consideration to leave. Robert had such spirit and the choreographers behind the scenes told me they loved working him, so his exit was tough for us. We were a split vote on the girls, and Nigel decide after the discussion to send Miranda home. It did go back and forth, because we felt Miranda had a better solo, but that Ashley had better performances over the last few weeks. As much as we hate to see really great dancers go home we must get down to a champion!! What a night, and what fun it was to sit next to Kristin Chenoweth. We had a lot of great laughs and both of us are country girls at heart.

Stepping off for now,

Mary

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